Original Characters Story

Basically we can organize all fanfiction stories here into three groups. The first one is for stories with canon characters only, the second one is for stories with both canon and original characters, and the third one is for stories with original characters only. But are stories from the third category popular? Is there any rating or research?

I can imagine that stories with original characters only could be less popular on average because a reader can’t find well-known character from the show. Also there is a complicated case with crossovers: can we consider characters from other media original in the context of the show? And what to do in case of computer games, where a player can customize his or her character?

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